The refit Enterprise saucer is 140 m in diameter. Looking at this picture :

That makes the spacedock doors 260 metres across. The Enterprise-D saucer is 470 metres across, so there's no way it would even come close to fitting.

This is exactly why I proposed Starbase 74 is a scaled up version of Spacedock. I made it 2.3 times bigger so that the doors would be 600 m across, easily large enough to fit the Galaxy class through - since we see that the Enterprise-D fits through the doors with plenty of room to spare on either side.

Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...

Is it possible that the doors could have been rebuilt to allow larger ships to enter? If a civilization could build such a structure, it seems conceivable they could modify it to suit their needs. Granted, a Galaxy class starship would find it a tighter fit when moving around then a Constitution.

Nor is one idea I've seen mooted that there is a much bigger set of doors on the other side of the station that we don't see in ST III.

If you look at the doors in comparison to the station, they are the same in both shots - because one is just a reuse of the model used for the other. If it were a larger door the proportions would be different.

There are also people who say the Excelsior couldn't have fitted through the Spacedock doors. This is nonsense, there is debate about the size of the Excelsior but even the biggest figure around puts the beam at 195.64 metres. Easily able to pass through the 260 m doors of the original spacedock.

Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...

Talondor wrote:Is it possible that the doors could have been rebuilt to allow larger ships to enter? If a civilization could build such a structure, it seems conceivable they could modify it to suit their needs. Granted, a Galaxy class starship would find it a tighter fit when moving around then a Constitution.

If your wife says she wants a bigger closet, just changing the size of the door ain't gonna make her happy.

Mikey wrote:If your wife says she wants a bigger closet, just changing the size of the door ain't gonna make her happy.

No one ever asked about making the space inside larger, just the doors to allow larger ships to access a already large space that could already hold the ships in question.

Graham Kennedy has already said it should be possible. In the Kelvin/Abrams section, from a thread called Post Enterprise Size in March '14 he said this:

And it's not like they have to worry about fitting through the Panama Canal or anything, right? The only thing similar is fitting through Spacedock doors, which doesn't even apply in the Abramsverse. And even if it did, the smallest iteration of Spacedock we've ever seen was easily big enough inside to fit a ship ten times the size of the Connie... it was literally a matter of fitting through the doors themselves, and how hard/expensive can it really be to make the doors bigger?

The Earth Spacedock is certainly big enough to house a GCS if need be.

Problem is what that shell is composed of. Is it just a thick hull or do they have something else? This isn't just a matter of slapping a new set of doors after you cut into it. Those doors would require major changes to the surrounding part of the structure.

We see windows on the outside though the doors do slide inside the hull. Also the doors would have to take more into account the curvature by that point. But that is a minor detail overall.

"Don't underestimate the power of technobabble: the Federation can win anything﻿ with the sheer force of bullshit"

Mikey wrote:If your wife says she wants a bigger closet, just changing the size of the door ain't gonna make her happy.

No one ever asked about making the space inside larger, just the doors to allow larger ships to access a already large space that could already hold the ships in question.

Graham Kennedy has already said it should be possible. In the Kelvin/Abrams section, from a thread called Post Enterprise Size in March '14 he said this:

And it's not like they have to worry about fitting through the Panama Canal or anything, right? The only thing similar is fitting through Spacedock doors, which doesn't even apply in the Abramsverse. And even if it did, the smallest iteration of Spacedock we've ever seen was easily big enough inside to fit a ship ten times the size of the Connie... it was literally a matter of fitting through the doors themselves, and how hard/expensive can it really be to make the doors bigger?

I'd stand by that. It would certainly be possible to widen the Spacedock doors to allow a GCS to fit through them. That's not to say it's necessarily a good idea... it could be that it can be done, but it simply isn't worth doing, refitting what would by TNG times be a 80+ year old design to allow modern ships to use it. Better to just scale it up.

And certainly there is no evidence to support the idea that this has ever been done. Certainly Starbase 74 is not an example of the doors being widened, since the doors on SB-74 are the same size in relation to the station as the Spacedock doors are.

Give a man a fire, and you keep him warm for a day. SET a man on fire, and you will keep him warm for the rest of his life...

It would probably be alot more simple and efficient to add airlocks on the outside to dock the larger ships of the 24th century. Although I believe it could be possible, adding the larger doors could compromise the structural intregraty.